Vegas was an event unlike any other. I can confidently saying despite not having gone. So we’re gonna devote a bit of attention to the awesome, primarily community-benefiting, stuff that came out of the largest card tournament ever.

Here’s a great play-by-play of the action from 20tweets, Brainstorm Brewery’s Jason Alt talking about the trip, the “Podcast House” that hosted a lot of the off-site action, and how to do a shop crawl to a GP.

Lastly, check out the new Twincast (I basically never listen to casts, let alone share them, so that says something about this), in which Internet celebrity @revisedangel talks about a lot of the details, stories, and goings on behind the scenes of GPLV.

Special Section Two: The Coverage Brewhaha

It all started with Part One of this series, “How to Improve Magic Coverage” that appeared on Start City Games the Monday after GP Vegas. Ex-player John Butler kicks off his four-part series (you can find the rest on SCG now) with some numbers and comparisons to other televised sports to argue that Magic coverage draws appallingly low viewership numbers, which he assumes is a problem.

The debate rang out across Twitter and other social media, and although many were quick to poke at hole, real or perceived, in Butler’s arguments, you can smell the change in the air. PVDDR responded on Channel Fireball to some of Butler’s basic ideas and how they make sense to pros, as opposed to average viewers.

Then my favorite local team stirred the pot a bit more, throwing up this awesome list they compiled of the top 100 Magic players in the world, a ranked list of which there is no official form. No global rankings for a semi-professional international sport? Yep, so clearly WotC’s system could be better.

Tournament Reports

Patriawan Kurniadi won GP Bangkok, which was RTR Block limited, taking the top eight with a Bant aggro deck, while Neal Oliver won a little touney called GP Vegas. He clinched the trophy on the back of Bonesplitter, and didn’t drop a match in his 17-run heater to the winner’s podium, after starting the tournament 0-1.

Metagame Info

Not much has changed in the overall composition of the Standard meta despite the recent win by Esper control, as Thragtusk remains the most played guy in a format defined by really good dudes.

Here’s recent Pro Tour champion Craig Wescoe on the best decks in Standard right now and how to beat them.

If you’re going to build a deck, you (and it) need a plan. Check out brewmaster Conley Woods’ explanation of how to build a plan around powerful cards you want to play so your own brew isn’t bad.

Some of the beauty of non-rotating formats comes from the range of viable decks, and in turn, how much you can deduce from the way they mull their mulligan and what they do on turn one. Carsten Kotter offers this fun walkthrough of opponents’ Legacy openers and what we can deduce from them.

Financials

In case you didn’t know, Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant have gotten more expensive since the release of Modern Masters, while a lot of the casual rares and uncommon included in the set have gone down in price.Learn about a few financial winners that didn’t show up in this set of powerful reprints.

Wizard’s announced that people at San Diego Comic Con will have the option to purchase a special set of the five M14 planewalkers with a unique color scheme, grayscale plus their mana symbol colors. It’s included here because initial speculation put the resale value of the set at $150, although that number seems low to me.

And in a fit of soulless self promotion (also shameless) check out my first piece of GeneralDamageControl. In Three Cards Deep, I tell you about card that you thought were weak but aren’t, you thought were good but are actually fun-crushers, and those that just fall flat. Tooting the general horn, this site is an awesome weekly destination for EDH theory goodness.

CommanderCast’s Devil’s Advocate seems to hate group hug even more than I do. (I don’t want everyone to draw more card even if I get to also, cuz the table’s outdrawing me three to one!) But the real gem is his description of a subset of hug players themselves.

If you have comments or questions, post below or shoot them to me on my Twitter handle @MdaveCs. GTWM is a work in progress and I’d love ideas of how to evolve it to make it more useful and fun for you.